I seem to have missed the '90s. We were busy; our daughters were born in 1991 and 1993, so we did not have time for any kind of cultural or social scene.
I guess that’s one of the signs of being an old fart. I couldn’t date the release of a popular song, band, or movie from the past twenty years within five years without a lot of thought. Everythign seems to run together after the late Eighties.
I pity the generation stuck with having to be nostalgic about the 2000s. 
Tetris and Dark Castle.
That defined the 90s for me!
When I think of the 90s, I think of Seinfeld and Friends. Which is odd, since the latter went well into the 00s. But I think it only barely started to update.
I also think of Daria, which fits, and when Jon Stewart had just started the Daily Show (which really doesn’t, but it has the look).
The Simpsons did a nostalgia-filled episode about Homer and Marge growing up in the nineties.
The funny thing is, they started being ~40 years old in 1989 and The Simpsons was biggest in the early nineties.
Civ II which I still play.
Radiohead’s The Bends, OK Computer and Kid A (released 2000), Blur and Oasis, Nirvana (especially Unplugged), Soundgarden etc.
At the tale end of the '90s there was really shit music like nu-metal, although I suppose it straddled the '90s and the '00s.
I liked the adult orientated pop that seemed to die out around 2000, songs with stories lol.
As far as revival, a lot of modern r ‘n’ b stripmines '90s europop and disco for sounds.
The internet being exciting and a bit edgy, and a bit unreliable.
I feel that in the '90s there was quite a bit more difference between english speaking countries, I feel the internet now is having a homogenising effect on us.
There was a huge amount of optimism here and elsewhere from the mid-90s on, that has long since given way to pessimism.
I remember in the '90s anytime you picked up a magazine it said Dublin was the coolest city in the world, nowadays I doubt you’d find anyone saying that.
There are lots of different things about the '90s that I’m not sure it’d be easy to encapsulate in a packaged experience. Where’s the common ground between The Levellers (now touring their ‘90s hits) and grebo, and Friends’ preppy chic?
Every web page looked home made back then, now they all look professional. It used to be one real long page and they all had a Free Speech Campaign Blue Ribbon, a hit counter, and a recommendation of which browser was needed to best view the site.
94-98 were my favorite years.
Amen. I was born in 1983 - the Cold War was over before I even noticed there’d been one. My generation was the first in a long time that grew up without the fear of global nuclear war - that’s no small thing.
Besides which, the world was an optimistic place. It really looked like Rabin and Arafat would make peace happen, much of the former Soviet bloc seemed to be demcratizing - hell, even Russia seemed to be on the right path. Think “Arab Spring without Twitter.” And a lot of it even stuck - look at the Baltic states, Poland, and German unification. (The Central Asian states were more dismal, and Georgia and Ukraine fall somewhere in the middle, but still).
Finally - the first war that kids of my generation were ever really aware of wasn’t some godawful mess in Asia. It was the first Gulf War - an unalloyed American victory, a resounding triumph for American military might. That’s how we grew up thinking of the American military.
There were horrors, of course - the Balkans, Rwanda, Congo. But for the rich bits of the West, life was good. Still is, actually - terrorism is unpleasant, but I’ll take the risk of a suicide bomb over nuclear annihilation any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
So it goes. Ever read the Travis McGee novels by John D. McDonald? In the early ones, published in the '60s, McGee is a Korean War veteran; by the '70s, he is a Vietnam War veteran.
I just got back from Seattle and the 90s are alive and kickin’ there. There’s a news story about re-naming a bridge in Aberdeen, WA after Kurt Cobain. The Experience Music Project’s (“Rock Hall West”) current featured exhibit is Nirvana. I went to Cobain’s house/memorial park (thanks, needscoffee!) and there were other people there. One was a family with teen boys and another was a 16-year-old boy from Barcelona sporting a Nirvana t-shirt and wondering if he could hop the fence to the house.
There’s also a new 90’s radio station in Cleveland (92.3), and from what I’ve heard very very similar stations in Seattle (107.7) and San Francisco (I forget the number). I’m guessing they’re all the same CBS Radio stations. They play Nirvana, RHCP, Alice in Chains, NIN, Soundgarden, Sublime, Pearl Jam, even POTUS and Harvey Danger. They mix in new stuff of a similar genre like White Stripes, Arcade Fire, Airborne Toxic Event, Phoenix, etc.
Honestly, that sort of music was lost to me for a while there. It wasn’t old enough for the classic rock stations (and felt out of place there) and it was played sparingly on whatever our modern rock stations were. I am pleased as punch to have the new 90’s-centric station!
The AV Club has been doing reviews of Pete & Pete this summer. I do believe the series is available on Hulu Plus. Beavis & Butthead is coming back very soon here.
I think those of us in our 30s are coming in to view for the marketers. We’re ready to spend money. We’re ready to re-live kid stuff via our own kids now. I think the 90s are about to smack everyone in the face and everyone is going to love it!
Musically, it’s hard to define the 90’s.
There was of course, the the decline of 80’s music such as the Hair/Glam Rock and the emergence of Grunge, and the growth of Rap/Hip Hop into the mainstream.
But on the other hand, 70's music seemed to return to the forefront. There was the resurgence of country music, a folk/hippy revival, a disco revival, and a punk revival, a ska revival, and a metal revival by the end of the decade.
Not to mention, retro-fashion or movies such as Austin Powers, Dazed and Confused or That 70s Show.
The 90s were arguably a nostalgic echo of the 70s.
ETA band name - Nostalgic Echo!
For listeners of R&B, there’s already a genre for late 80s to mid-90s music called “New Jack swing”. Whenever I listen to it, I’m transformed back to middle and high school. “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd is just one in that genre. I remember when we had to do persuasion speeches in eighth grade English, and this girl stood up and played that song on a tape player (CDs were too “new” on the scene) as she talked about the dangers of unsafe sex.
BET plays old reruns of “In Living Color.” Really, you can’t get any more early-to-mid 90s than that. Think of the folks that came out of that show. Jamie Fox. Jim Carey. Tommy Davidson. David Allen Grier. Jennifer Lopez (she was a Fly Girl, remember?) I still hear people say things like, “Homey don’t play that!” and “Lemme show you something!” and “I’m ret’ to go!” It got lame towards the end, but those first couple of seasons were off the chain.
The 90s were fierce, but then again, I’m in that “demographic.” I entered and exited my teen years during this decade, so of course it’s going to carry a certain significance to me. I know some would say the falling of the Berlin wall marked the beginning of the 90s, but not for me. It didn’t really begin until 1992, during the Rodney King riots. That was so much more “in my face”. What a horrible way to start a decade, right? But it did seem to raise awareness of police brutality and injustice in the justice system, as well as bring political consciousness to teenagers such as myself, who before then were kind of clueless about the outside world.
And Douglas Coupland! (Still going strong, but he began his career in the '90s, with the publication of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991).
Another musical feature of the '90s I just thought about was the prominence of film soundtrack cds as zeitgeist defining. Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, The Bodyguard, Trainspotting, Romeo + Juliet and many others had soundtracks that sold 100,000s, often millions. Maybe film soundtracks still sell but the last one I can recall that was notable autonomous of its film was probably Garden State (2004) and I don’t think it had nearly as much impact as all the others I’ve mentioned.
the crow! Omg don’t forget the crow soundtrack!!!
I remember everyone having the Batman Forever soundtrack. I still say Batman Forever is the best movie from the Burton/Schumacher series!
The 1990s was also when the environmentalist movement really got going. Looked at one way, an instance of gloom-and-doom – but of a form people believed they could do something about. That, wise or foolish, is optimism.
On the general subject of decadenal music, I’ll just say this: there was freaking great music, and great musical movements, in each and every “decade” (wherever the boundaries between them are drawn) at least since the boys came back from Korea. If you think of the musics of any of these decades as unworthy in any sense, that just means you weren’t or aren’t cool enough to know about, or get, the good stuff. That’s okay, you don’t have to dig it all. But do yourself a favor and don’t flaunt it.
I agree with that, but I do think that the music to actually get played on the top-ten radio stations was better in the '90s than the stuff in the '00s. There was good music in the past decade but it was all on college rock stations. Unless you’re one of those people who thinks that Lady Gaga is really fantastic.
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Word up, Argent Towers. The 90’s were great. In that decade I finally realized I was an adult, bought a house, had a kid (a terrific kid, IMHO), and turned off the TV. I lived in Seattle most of the decade, and you can smirk if you want but it was probably the most happening city in the U.S. at the time. By the end of the decade I was in a new profession - one that I love - and I had discovered new passions and interests that sustain me to this day. Plus some of the best electronica ever recorded was from that decade. Yep, good times.